This morning, Berlin’s hapless Governing Mayor Kai Wegner appealed to the House of Representatives “to allow the use of de-icing salt in exceptional cases” to “alleviate the dangerous situation”. After everybody had a good laugh at Wegner for his impotent social media appeals, the man discovered that he is actually in charge of the whole executive and that he can just do things:
Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner has… commented in a press release: “The safety of Berliners is my top priority. That is why I have instructed the Senator for Transport today to issue a general ruling without delay, allowing private individuals and the VSR to use road salt on sidewalks to remove the ice cover.” Wegner further emphasised that he was aware that this decision was “associated with legal uncertainties.” Nevertheless, he considered it appropriate due to the “special situation”. “There is still a need for the fastest possible legal regulation to create legal certainty for the future. We will continue to discuss this in the coalition in the near future.”
Of course Wegner could have waived these retarded rules weeks ago before all those elderly people ended up with grievous injuries in overflowing emergency rooms. At least the harm to Berlin’s trees has been minimised, I guess.
But what is this snow and ice? All the best scientists assured me these conditions would be long gone in Europe by 2025.
To this point, Schefter’s tweet is the only actual news on this topic. The NFL has not said what duties the Chief Kindness Officer will have. Maybe it’s going to strictly enforce taunting and roughing the passer penalties and demanding that players shake hands after every play? Maybe it will be going around Super Bowl Media Day and only asking questions about what their favorite ice cream flavor is? Maybe Mann will be in the broadcast booth and join Mike Tirico and Cris Collinsworth as NBC’s kindness expert.
Dhar Mann is a name that’s probably not familiar to too many NFL fans. And his selection by the NFL one is quite a bizarre one given the normally safe and conservative way that the league does business.
Mann first entered the headlines in 2012 when he was charged with 13 felonies for defrauding the city of Oakland through his medical marijuana business. He later pled no contest to five of those charges and was sentenced to probation.
After those legal troubles, Mann shifted to content creation where he found much greater success. His YouTube page Dhar Mann Studios has over 25 million subscribers. The content is mainly scripted short movies around 20-30 minutes in length that features some celebrity appearances and thought-provoking titles like “Mikey Falls in Love with YouTuber” and “Vegan Teacher Bans All Meat Inside School.” The videos are quite popular and have an uplifting meaning, which is clearly what inspired the NFL to partner with him.
The ozone layer of NFL management is determined to make its product the dreaded “second screen” in the background while everyone is concentrating on their iPhones and iPads. I greatly miss the days when Pete Rozelle would have laughed in an interviewer’s face had he suggested the league needed a “chief kindness officer:”
This 1977 CBS NFL Today intro is fucking spectacular. The plays get progressively more illegal and fucked up to the point I was almost expecting some guy to get murdered on the field by the end. Do yourself a favor and watch this.
The legacy media must be devastated. Melania just had a huge box-office opening for a documentary, despite all the efforts to destroy the film before its release.
Deadline reports that Melania will finish the weekend in third place, with an $8 million opening.
Coming in at third is Amazon MGM Studios’ Brett Ratner-directed documentary Melania, which is eyeing $2.85M today (no previews) for an $8M opening in third place — that result would mark the best start for a docu in the last decade (beating Angel Studios’ 2023 doc After Death, which opened to $5M and finaled at $11.5M stateside). I’m hearing sales are gaining, with Florida and Texas quite large, for the First Lady’s big-screen debut.
According to Deadline, “EntTelligence showed Melania presales overindexing in rural areas with populations under 500,000.” The outlet noted that while “license fees plus marketing on this pic equals $75M.”
“Are MAGA groups driving sales? Maybe, but that will be sussed out as the weekend goes on. Know this: This isn’t an Angel Studios release fueled by some semblance of fan sales or an Amazon Prime super-ticket.”
The film’s success isn’t just a win for Melania Trump. It’s a crushing blow to the mainstream media, which subjected the film to a relentless propaganda campaign aimed at undermining it.
It’s dispiriting, it’s deadly and it’s spectacularly unrevealing. Ratner’s film plays like a gilded trash remake of Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest in which a button-eyed Cinderella points at gold baubles and designer dresses, cunningly distracting us while her husband and his cronies prepare to dismantle the Constitution and asset-strip the federal government. “White and gold – that’s so you,” purrs one of her lickspittles as she busies herself with the colour-scheme for the ball and the incoming first lady allows that yes indeed, this is true.
Zone of Interest was of course an avant-garde 2023 film about the commandant of Auschwitz and the bourgeois life he and his family live as unspeakable horrors occur just beyond his home’s backyard. What exactly does the Grauniad think Trump has done that compares to that? Similarly, as Jonah Goldberg wrote in 2001, “Aside from the murder and genocide, what exactly don’t you like about National Socialism?” As Jonah has written, “I’ve never met a real social-welfare state leftist who could answer [that] question without having to think real hard.”
And on occasion, the Grauniad hasn’t seemed to mind murder and genocide all that much. Also, unlike that leftist British publication and the makers of the Zone of the Interest, curiously enough, the man they see as Hitler seems rather fond of Israel.
If you can't understand why comparing Melania to The Zone of Interest doesn't expose you as stupid at best, delusional at worst, there is no saving or bringing you back to sanity or a reasonable conversation. You either understand history or you don't.
THE PEOPLE WHO CAST THE VOTES DECIDE NOTHING. THE PEOPLE WHO COUNT THE VOTES DECIDE EVERYTHING:
The most indefensible part of what happened in Georgia in 2020 is that you do not need body cam footage, confessions, or insider testimony to know, as in know with absolute certainty, that a small group of people locking themselves in a room until well after midnight to count… https://t.co/yuBhqsmQVz
May I humbly suggest that if sending Haitians to Haiti is a death sentence because it’s full of Haitians then bring Haitians here is a death sentence for our country https://t.co/ADlKsgjPHD
A new debate on snow is heating up online with posts from two Memphis City Council members, one of whom claims she’s getting threats over the post.
Pearl Walker and Yolanda Cooper-Sutton shared social media posts this week questioning whether the snow that fell across the city was real, or possibly man-made. The topic is trending on TikTok.
The comments quickly took off online, drawing strong reaction as crews across Memphis were still dealing with icy roads, school closures, and cleanup from one of the city’s more significant winter storms in recent years.
Today in “we are governed by people who failed 8th grade science”: two #Memphis City Council members posted videos claiming the recent snow was… fake. As in “this ain’t snow, y’all,” because it didn’t melt the way they expected when they held a lighter to a snowball.
A woman who received a double mastectomy at the age of 16 under the guise of transgender-related healthcare was just awarded $2 million in the first successful medical-malpractice lawsuit brought by a destransitioner.
Fox Varian sued her New York-based psychologist and plastic surgeon for facilitating her gender-transition double mastectomy in 2019, independent reporter Benjamin Ryan who attended Varian’s recent trial, said. Although a host of detransitioners have sued doctors who rush to “affirm” gender confusion with life-altering surgeries, Varian’s is the first known successful lawsuit.
Claire Deacon, Varian’s mother, was led by her daughter’s psychologist to believe that breast removal was the only way to heal Varian’s gender dysphoria, she told the jury. At first Deacon told Varian’s psychologist Kenneth Einhorn that top surgery was “never gonna happen” if she could help it.
“This man was just so emphatic, and pushing and pushing, that I felt like there was no good decision,” she said, according to an Epoch Times report. “I think it was a scare tactic: I don’t believe it was malice, I think he believed what he was saying … but he was very, very wrong.”
The idea of her 16-year-old daughter receiving a mastectomy made her “physically ill,” Deacon said. But Deacon was led to believe by Einhorn that Varian would be unhappy unless she was affirmed in her gender dysphoria. It was the “the hardest, most difficult, gut-wrenching” decision, Deacon told the jury.
Two million? Those are rookie numbers. Red states need to pump those numbers up much higher:
Plaintiff’s lawyers are going to end “gender change” surgeries on minors. This was a New York jury. Can you imagine when some of these cases get to red state jurors? Someone is going to get hit with nine figures in damages. Doctors who did these surgeries should lose licenses too https://t.co/QV9kRqZO71
Retiring D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser was seen drinking with fellow mayors at a hotel bar and snapping photos with fans inside the Marriott Marquis downtown on Thursday for this year’s U.S. Conference of Mayors as the streets and sidewalks of her city remain covered in snow and ice, according to a conference attendee.
“She had no care in the world,” the attendee said.
Approaching a week after the snowstorm ended, tons of streets and sidewalks in the nation’s capital remain unsalted, unplowed, and extremely icy, including on Pennsylvania Avenue. Where plows have made their rounds and K-12 schools have finally reopened, many sidewalks and cross walks remain blockaded by treacherous ice-packed snow banks.
Politicians, particularly mayors, tend to come under close scrutiny when bad weather hits and residents hold them responsible for the city’s response. Bowser, however, is not running for reelection.
Bowser’s decision to spend an evening this week drinking with fellow politicians as her city remains a sheet of ice is reminiscent the same political instincts she demonstrated over the summer, when she fled town to pick up her daughter in Martha’s Vineyard the same week President Donald Trump announced his federal takeover of the nation’s capital.
Still though, this is pretty minor league political decadence compared to DC legend Marion Barry:
Is music getting worse? Rick Beato is a musician, producer and critic with more than five million YouTube subscribers. His answer would be: yes, pretty much. In a recent video, he compares the 2026 Grammy Song of the Year nominees to those of 1984. There are a few bright sparks among the slate of new songs, but Beato regards most of them as derivative, unoriginal and unlikely to be remembered past the end of the awards show. In contrast, 42 years on, all the 1984 nominees – Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” and Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long” among them – are firmly embedded in the popular music canon.
One could ask the same question about science: has it gotten worse? My answer, I have to say, reflects Beato’s for music. As in popular music, bright sparks do still show up in the stream of science. But, as with popular music, nearly all of what passes for “science” these days is dull, derivative, repetitive and forgettable, unlikely to make an impression past the deadline for the next grant application.
Beato has a compelling explanation as to why popular music seems to be getting worse. His thesis is simple: the culture and economics of the music industry have cheapened creativity and incentivized mediocrity. New technologies are accelerating this decline.
Could something similar be behind the cheapening of science? “No” would be the reflexive answer of most in the industry – and probably laymen, too. But both music and science are, at root, creative arts: Einstein liked to imagine what it would be like to ride a photon; August Kekulé dreamt that the structure of benzene was like an ouroboros, a snake swallowing its own tail; Francis Crick and James Watson imaginatively turned the DNA double helix outside in to arrive at a structure no one else thought possible. Science advances more through these flights of creative fancy than through all the millions of scientific papers academics publish each year. As in the field of music, creativity in science has been debased like a tin nickel. Mediocrity is incentivized.
Science and music have begun to converge in the form of AI. In a recent YouTube clip, producer/engineer Warren Huart noted:
Songwriters are using AI to write tracks. They’re using the AI to write tracks. Maybe they’re manipulating it. Maybe they’re taking an individual vocal, etc. But I have heard and seen and experienced it, and people are playing instruments to those tracks.
Now, I think [AI music generating platform] Suno stopped the ability for people to download stems, but you could still put in your track idea—make it a death metal song with Hawaiian bloody blah blah—output it, and then Izotope [RX] it and remove all the stems that way. And then real musicians—yes, real musicians—are then replaying the parts.
That is happening each and every day in our industry, and with people you know: with producers you know, with engineers you know, with mixers you know, with songwriters you know, and with artists that you know. That is how songs are happening.
There will be more material being made than ever before. Artists who are successful will be pumping out more music than they’ve ever done before because now, some of the heavy lifting—the initial ideas—will be done by AI. And it’s happening now, for real.
So not just the sort of country song that went to number one in a digital playback of a country music chart or wherever it was—that’s just the beginning. There are already songs that you are hearing that started off as AI, and maybe they’ve been replayed, maybe they’ve been manipulated, but that is where our industry is at for real.
According to Billboard in late November, “In just the past few months, at least six AI or AI-assisted artists have debuted on various Billboard rankings. That figure could be higher, as it’s become increasingly difficult to tell who or what is powered by AI — and to what extent.” How prolific will AI-generated music become going forward?
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Coincidentally, this came up on my Facebook “memories” today:
The student agitator accused Klein of enabling Israel’s so-called genocide in Gaza. The columnist, whose speaking fees typically run from $40,000 to $70,000, sought to assure the shrieking activist that he also despised Israel, which he said was tormenting Palestinians through “apartheid and subjugation.” The activist kept ranting about fascism, so Klein pleaded for his attention. “Buddy, buddy, talk to me,” he said. “I am right here.” They didn’t care.
The anti-Israel agitators made their way to exit, chanting as they went. “Ezra Klein, you’re a liar, you set Palestine on fire,” they shouted. “Every time Ezra lies, a neighborhood in Gaza dies.” They soon joined other protesters outside the venue, clapping along to more chants about how Sarah Lawrence was inviting fascists and protecting Zionism.
“Welcome to Sarah Lawrence,” Judd quipped. Klein thanked her for the courtesy.
Klein appeared somewhat surprised when the activists refused to engage with him. “Why do you think I deny what’s going on in Gaza?” he asked the terrorist sympathizer. “I don’t think you know what I think.”
It’s safe to assume the student activists didn’t know much about anything. Klein has not shied away from criticizing Israel, which he has argued is on the verge of becoming a “pariah state.” He voted for New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani (D.) and said he didn’t think there was “anything anti-Semitic about him at all.” He has described “anti-Zionists” of the left as promoting universal human rights, even if they occasionally hold “dumb signs at protest rallies.” In Klein’s view, it’s the right-wing anti-Semites who are motivated by racial animus.
Charles Murray rings the bell curve in response:
But perhaps you can understand my guilty pleasure at seeing Ezra wrongly accused of the same sort of thing he wrongly accuses me of. https://t.co/E2yGKPKYYr
Even after their instruments were set up on the roof of Apple Corps, Lennon, McCartney, Starr, and Harrison almost didn’t go through with it.
The director [Michael Lindsay-Hogg] explained, “We planned to do it about 12:30 to get the lunchtime crowds. They didn’t agree to do it as a group until about 20 to 1:00. Paul wanted to do it, and George didn’t. Ringo would go either way. Then John said, ‘Oh [f***], let’s do it,’ and they went up and did it.”
Police were called after noise complaints came in from neighboring buildings surrounding the rooftop and clogged streets from the thousands who stopped to listen. Police officer Ray Dagg and other officers were forced to end what would turn out to be the last live performance by the world’s most famous band.
“We’ve had 30 complaints at West End Central in minutes,” former London Metropolitan Police officer Dagg said in a video clip. “Turn the PA off, and we’ll see what happens.”
Fifty years after the incident, in 2019, Dagg told The Times of London the event was “just work, and it’s blown up into all this. It’s ridiculous, I just don’t understand it.”
He continued, “At that time, I didn’t know that they would never play together again. At least there’s something on a film somewhere that will forever show that PC Ray Dagg shut down the Beatles.”
Additionally, Dagg told CTV that reflecting on the moment, he didn’t know if he actually would have arrested The Beatles. “The problem with it is that for the offenses they were committing, there was no power of arrest on private property. It has to be on public property.”
“So it would have meant arresting them on private property,” Dagg said. “Taking them outside, and then I’d have gotten into a lot of trouble if I turned up at the station with The Beatles in tow, wrongfully arrested.”
Would have been a great ending to the movie, though!
On Friday, it was reported that Don Lemon was arrested for his part in the invasion of a St. Paul, MN church. The notoriously leftist Lemon (he’s a multiple winner of MRC’s Worst Quote of the Year) was so biased that he actually got fired from CNN.
For a look at the worst of Lemon’s time at CNN see here.
Since Lemon was canned from his CNN show, he has continued his horrible ways as podcaster.
The following are just some of the worst outbursts from his post-CNN career:
The only people whose First Amendment rights have been infringed here are the congregants at the church Don Lemon invaded. He was part of the planning, he trespassed and refused to leave, and he called those churchgoers “white supremacists.” To make matters worse, he’s even profiting from his crimes. And we know everything he did because he was stupid enough to record it the whole time.
Don Lemon’s desperation for relevance is not a pass to break the law. A microphone is not a shield against the consequences of his actions.
If you disagree, why don’t you give us your home address so we can do the same to you?
No? Well, why do you hate journalism?
If only Mohamed Atta had brought his smart phone:
According to the retarded new legal theories of Democrat journos, if the 9/11 terrorists had just livestreamed their flights, the whole thing would’ve been kosher. https://t.co/b4DOkhWDNZ
Lemon has hired Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell to represent him…Lowell is a very accomplished attorney, and if I were in this kind of trouble, I’d be lucky to have him (and very, very broke in the end). However, this defense is a loser for several reasons, the first of which is that Lemon wasn’t the only party to this incident that had First Amendment rights at stake. The First Amendment protects the right to freedom of religious expression, the core of which is the right to worship in one’s own church in peace. Even people claiming to be journalists can’t interrupt worship services and demand impromptu “interviews” with the minister or celebrant, especially inside the church on private property. Lemon filmed himself preparing with the instigators outside before invading the church, and his “interview” consisted of demanding answers to the instigators’ claims and demands.
Next up, the criminal statutes involved do not have “journalist” exceptions. Neither the FACE Act nor the Ku Klux Klan act allow for disruption of church services for the purpose of “journalism.” Nate the Lawyer covered both of these statutes in the video below shortly after the crime occurred, mainly focusing on the Klan Act. Nate’s conclusion is that Lowell has his work cut out for him.
But he was just speaking truth to power…:
Imagine thinking that storming a church, harassing the pastor and congregants, and the refusing to leave immediately when asked is holding “those in power to account.”
Related: I had no idea the iPhone contained a virtual “Get Out of Jail Free” card within it:
The current position of the Democratic Party is that as long as you are holding a cell phone or a camera you can literally commit any crime you want and face no consequences.
On the movement of assets front, the Lincoln is pretty much ready to go, and has gone dark.
BREAKING: 🚨🇺🇸 USS Abraham Lincoln has gone dark, with no transponder or communication, signaling possible preparation for action against Iran. pic.twitter.com/SX0O7GIBUJ
That’s an awful lot of firepower. Included in those carrier groups are destroyers, submarines, as well as the jets on board the Lincoln and Bush. One destroyer, the Delbert D. Black, should be on station about now to help Israel with missile defense/intercepts.
US Navy guided missile destroyer USS Delbert D. Black (DDG 119) has been confirmed by officials as entering the region as of yesterday. It's last position was departing NSA Souda Bay, Crete on the 26th.
It joins the USS Roosevelt (DDG 80) in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.
As for land assets, Secretary of State/National Security Advisor Marco Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday that there were around 40,000 American troops stationed across eight or nine bases across the greater Middle East. That’s a lot of well-trained bodies to throw at a problem if necessary.
With regard to air capabilities, besides the planes on the carriers, we had all sorts of other not normal flights taking place over the last couple days.
Actor Giancarlo Esposito crystallized today’s Democrat Party by admitting he is willing to see people die to fulfill his revolution.
This is a direct quote, per the far-left Variety, and these are the words of a narcissistic sociopath. Block quotes are Variety’s…
This is time for a revolution — and they don’t even know that’s what they’re starting. We have to stand up to it. They can’t take us all down. If the whole world showed up on Putin’s doorstep or the Iranians’ doorstep or in Washington, they’d kill 500 or 50 million or however [many], but the rest of us would survive with a new [world].
Don’t you get it, you over-privileged, leftist dummies?
Do you not see it?
You bored, spoiled brats attempting fill the God-shaped hole in your soul by attacking law enforcement, destroying private property, and provoking violence are nothing more or less than cannon fodder to Democrat Party elites like Giancarlo Esposito.
Christian Toto adds, “and remember, Disney fired Gina Carano for pleading for tolerance but this actor will face zero repercussions.”
Neither will ’80s it-girl Molly Ringwald:
"I don’t think I need to remind you — I’ll just give a little history lesson here — if you look at what happened in France, where I lived for a few years in my twenties, they were taken over by the Nazis. They were invaded, they were taken over, and a lot of people, a lot of…
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) used a fake AI photo of the Alex Pretti shooting on the Senate floor to condemn the Trump administration’s actions in Minnesota.
I’m not kidding.
Notice anything?
Um, the agent on his knees does not have a head.
How did anyone on his staff not notice anything? The first thing I noticed was the agent with no head! How do you miss it when you blow up the photo!?
Then again, the staff probably knows that nothing matters and anything that comes after won’t gain traction.
It's somehow a perfect pratfall! At the top of her Monday MS NOW show, Nicolle Wallace aired an AI-enhanced image of "nonviolent bystander" Alex Pretti as she alleged Trump demands "you not believe your eyes and ears" on this. She says we can see the facts "with our own eyes." pic.twitter.com/Dd5aX0J7SN
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